Not Even Happy in My Dreams
by Calculated Artificiality
Summary: I can't even be happy in my dreams anymore.  It's just another thing loving you has taken away from me.


So, I've been on a writing kick lately. Which is a good thing. I love writing, and it gives me a way to spend my time before school starts again in a couple weeks.

**Disclaimer:** I've realized I should probably put a disclaimer on these things… even though I'm sure everyone knows I don't own Mulder and Scully… no matter how much I wish I did: )

This story is based on a dream I've had—turned into Scully's POV.

**Not Even Happy in My Dreams:**

Last night I had a dream. It was a really, really great dream. I met a man. I have been so long without meeting a man that I am beginning to have dreams about meeting one.

It was such a beautiful dream. I remember being so happy in it—I was somewhere, I was myself, but I was working somewhere else. I was working in a coffee shop, maybe. And I had this customer—a really nice, funny man.

He's tall. Attractive to me, but in an unconventional way. He makes me smile, and we talk. He's laughing and we're talking and I start to get this nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach—the one I get when I hope someone will ask me for my number, or ask me for a dance, or just want to get to know me better.

I'm kind of surprised I recognized that feeling. Or, more accurately, I'm kind of surprised I recognized that feeling as being separate from you. For years now, that feeling I get in the pit of my stomach has only been associated with you.

He doesn't ask for my number. Instead, he goes and sits with friends, and I can't help but stare at him longingly. Which isn't like me at all. But there he is, just being himself—I can see he's being himself, and his friends love him, his charisma floats up and seems to take up all the air in the coffee shop where I am now apparently employed.

He looks at me sometimes, and I try to pretend I'm not looking at him too. He's light haired, a kind of sandy blonde, and his hair is longer, kind of shaggy looking—which isn't usually the type I go for, but it works really well on him.

I can see that his friends are getting ready to leave, and they all head out the door, and I feel a rush of disappointment. But suddenly, without my noticing, he is standing in front of me—with a smile on his face.

He says something, which I don't remember now, as I am recounting this dream, and then says "I can tell someone's interested in me."

I blush furiously, like I always do when I'm confronted like that, and with my skin, he can see it, but he laughs like he thinks it's cute, and I'm not bothered by the fact that my staring was so obvious. He has a light in his blue eyes, and his mere presence seems to put me at ease.

As if sensing my fears he says "Don't worry. I'm interested, too." And at that moment, I feel a huge weight lift off my heart, and I smile, feeling instantly happy and gratified.

Time passes in the way that it does in dreams—I don't know how long it's been, I just know that we are together, this man and I, and we are happy—seemingly infinitely so. In my dream, I am carefree and smiling, so different from my actual life, and I feel free.

But then I wake up. I wake up from this wonderful dream and I am saddened. I want to go back to sleep—I want to feel carefree. I want to feel happy, the way I did with this dream man whose name does not even exist.

I try to will myself back to sleep and back into the dreamful bliss—but, as usual, that doesn't work. So I toss and turn, but keep my eyes closed, praying that I'll be able to fall back asleep and into the dream again.

I felt kind of pathetic, for wanting to retreat into the happiness of a dream so badly, but it didn't stop me.

Somehow, though, my mind turned to you. As it usually does. And I started thinking about you—about us. About you in relation to me and vice versa.

Eventually, I must have fallen back asleep, and I was happy to find myself back in the dream. That so rarely happens, so I was excited, looking for the man—and I found him.

But he wasn't the same. His hair was still sandy blonde, but it no longer fit him, having since grown facial hair—a goatee of some sort—and his face looked tired. His eyes no longer had the light, and I knew it before he even said a word to me.

We were over. This man and I no longer had our relationship—what we had had turned sour, but he still came into my coffee shop because he liked the coffee even though he no longer liked me—and though I wanted to, I no longer liked him.

Our exchanges were short and clipped, and we didn't look each other in the eye. I glanced at him while he was sitting with his friends and he seemed withdrawn—no longer the man with all the charisma.

And I was sad. God help me, I was devastated. Tears started pouring down my face, as I stood there holding what wonderful thing this man and I had together in the palms of my hands—as I watched it shatter like broken glass on the floor—unable to bridge the gap between us.

My heart. It hurt. I was no longer happy, as I had been in the dream previous, I was disappointed and utterly broken.

I woke up feeling the same way—dejected. I had, although it was just a dream, gone from utter bliss to complete sadness in the matter of a few hours. I wondered why my life had to always end up this way. I couldn't even sustain myself—my happiness—in dreams, let alone in my real life.

I started to think about why this happened—about why this wonderful dream suddenly went very wrong. Why did it break?

I thought hard, you know, and I only came up with one conclusion. The same conclusion I always come to.

My dream life failed because of you.

I was unable to be happy in a life with another man because of you.

It seems pathetic, but it always comes back to you. You see? You have complete control over me—not content to just stay in my life, but not in the way I want you in it, you have to take over my dreams, too.

Isn't my life enough for you?

I guess it's not really your fault though. You did invade my dreams, much in the way you've invaded my heart—so much so that I can't ever be happy with another man, no matter how wonderful he is—even in my dreams.

But it's me, isn't it? When it gets right down to it, that's all there is.

After all, it was my subconscious that failed. You're the reason, sure, but it was me.

I'm the one who puts you where you are. In my heart, in my mind, subconsciously invading my subconscious in my dreams.

Or if I don't put you there, I have at the very least let you in. I've let you stay.

When I woke up from the second dream, in which I was no longer happy, I wanted to kick you out. Leave the space I've given you in my heart open for some other man to come along and fill.

I wanted to forget about you and try to be something, have something, with another man.

But, see, that's only possible in my dreams.

And even that's only possible for a little while.

Because as my dreams have proven, you'll always invade my thoughts, because you're in my heart. No matter what I try to say about it.

More than that, though, I think somehow, over the years, you've become more.

Somehow, you have become my heart.

—the end—


End file.
